It’s Not Over…?
52:35 Share

Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy. Now you've all heard the chatter among the political class. They're falling all over themselves saying this race is over. Well, I have news for all of them. New Hampshire...

is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation.

Well, she's right. She's right. It's not over. It's just over for her. You know, and I'm sad about it. You are exactly who she was talking about, Murphy, you cynical bastard. Yeah, I'm falling over myself with my CW. And, you know, I was there. I was doing the kind of shoe leather reporting that we do here on Hex on Tap. I was in New Hampshire for the requisite media pundocracy 48 hours.

And it was grim. It was very grim. And, you know, all you have to do is listen and we probably have it. I don't know if we even want to play at Trump's victory speech. No, we're going to do some of that. We're absolutely going to do it because there's a reason to do it. I mean, obviously, her plan, her hope,

outlined here by mike murphy for months was she you know finishes second in iowa go ahead go ahead she finishes second in iowa she surprises trump in new hampshire and then she goes back to south carolina with a lot of mojo and momentum uh she didn't finish second in iowa she lost by double digits in new hampshire and the question is should she go on to south carolina

Well, I would argue, no, I've got a sub stack. I wrote last night this up. I think I'm like Mike Murphy, 96 or whatever the hell the sub stack handle is. And I tweeted it. Look, yeah. And you're right. I always thought the way to beat Trump was beat him in New Hampshire and then beat him in South Carolina. One, two punch. Very hard to do, but that would have knocked him out of, I think, the commanding position nomination. He probably would have lost. And by the end of last year, to her credit, we're going to see him win.

with an assist from an incredibly mediocre field of competition, Haley kind of stumbled to winning the preseason. So she had the shot and I think she could have won the New Hampshire primary, but she did all the New Hampshire stuff wrong and just turned out to be the vessel of cranky non-Republican voters and, you know, a few, maybe 25% of the primary vote. And that wasn't enough.

Though I will say in the secret Hacks on Tap text channel that the world will never see, I think I was finally getting a prediction right saying 10 to 11 points. Well, other numbers like 17 to 22 points were bandied around from frequent readers of polling. I admit that I pay too much attention to...

I guess one way to soften the blow of a hard defeat is to outperform the final tracking polls that were even worse than what you ultimately did. And so she can take some solace in that. When your victory speech in a two-person race includes the phrase,

too much cheering that you got almost half of the vote. Yeah. You are, you are tracking, you are tracking to not winning the race. There were two of us and I got the silver. Yeah.

Yes, I mean, it's right. If we didn't have copyright infringements, we'd add in a little Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights to sort of sum this whole thing up. But look, I have a little bit of an alternative view, I guess, on why she might be staying in. And I would say with a caveat.

I'm interested to know whether she'll be in this race in a week. I don't know whether... Yeah, I'm dubious. I'm not surprised that she came out last night. And notice, she came out really early before the numbers got a little bit farther apart. She came out

I thought her speech was actually pretty good. She sort of outlined it all, which is what drove Trump crazy, and we'll talk about that. But I think the alternative view here is, you know, we talk about the beginning of March as being Super Tuesday. It's also when Trump really gets into the criminal side of these 91 indictments. And I think you can make the case, and I bet somebody's making the case to Nikki Haley, stay in this race, accumulate delegates. Nobody else is accumulating delegates right now. If Trump, you know, hits...

hits a big pothole in April or whenever,

She's got delegates. They can go to the convention. Last night, 8 to 12, you know. But you're right, Robert. And I'm sure there are a bunch of finance guys staying. Stay in. Stay in. Hold the ticket. Why not? What does it cost you to get out? We're a fund of minimal campaign. And you never know. He might have four meatloaves tonight. You know what I'm saying? So she's hearing a lot of that. The problem is what she's going to get for the next week is...

is the entire Vichy Republican establishment saying, get out of the way, you're helping Biden. You're only in this because all the Democrats voted for you in New Hampshire. You're a tool of the left, and they're going to pound the hell out of her, and then she's going to go to her home state, where, by the way, a lot of the inside Pauls don't like her. Right.

And they're going to gnaw on her like a pack of hyenas. And then she's going to lose Nevada, too, which is rigged. It's a grim path. Yeah, I mean, it's not even a contest. Maybe she wins Massachusetts in early March on Super Tuesday when all the states are. The other option for her, and this is what I wrote, was if you want to be president, you're young.

Go away. Don't join the train with DeSantis, or as I like to call him now, the sycophantus. And Tim Scott, who's the most embarrassing. Yeah, how do you like that one? You could work for the Trump team there, thinking those things up. I'm in negotiations now with La Savita, though he's a cheap bastard, so I don't know. But anyway, and play the long game, because the Trump thing is going to end badly. If he wins, he'll screw the midterms. Or Biden may, for all the weaknesses we talk about, beat him again.

And then Nikki will be the one who warned us in four years. There's an angle for her to play it long and smart for her own interest. Now, personally, I want her to show up.

I want her to take a heel. I want to bounce it off Trump's head and then put on the sleeper and save America. But I'm kidding, Secret Service. But I think... They got their eye on you, man. They listen to this podcast. Oh, yeah. I've had run-ins with them before, let's just say, during the Trump era. I'm on the list. A hundred mile barrier. But anyway, so I think she'll...

Make the noise like she did last night of the bayonet charge for a couple days, and then Nikki's in the Nikki business, and South Carolina would be humiliation. But I'm not sure. And not that these mean a lot, but I do think you're going to see, and you saw a bit of it last night, a stampede of elected officials, members of Congress and the Senate that are getting on the right side of where they think this thing is going to end.

you know, when the GOP chair comes out and leans in on this, that's a tell because, you know, the Trump people are squeezing them hard. I thought it was interesting. John Cornyn, Republican from Texas, member of the Senate Republican leadership who basically had said, look, I'm not getting involved in the primary, came out last night. So I think you're going to see this huge stampede. I'm not sure in the whole electoral scheme of things it means a lot. In the zeitgeist of sort of

party unification. Plus, let's be honest, Nikki Haley outlined, I think a cogent case last night for why not Donald Trump in that speech. And it clearly drove him absolutely bad. Yeah. I wish I'd heard it a year ago. Yeah. Yeah. No, she'll listen. She, she just, the, the, in a, it was a finally calibrated calculation. She got to New Hampshire and recalled all the things that bothered her about Donald Trump and started reciting them, uh,

uh, you know, like a year into her campaign. But, um, the one thing that she didn't mention, uh, was that the guy is about to stand trial. I mean, and that's a taboo thing. You can't talk about it in the Republican primary because it's now become an emblem of a collaboration with the deep state to, uh, to talk about that. She did put up a spot today in South Carolina. She's

She's reserved $4 million in time. Biden, too old. Trump, too much chaos. A rematch no one wants. There's a better choice for a better America. Her story started right here. America's youngest governor, a conservative Republican. And boy, did she deliver. It's a great day in South Carolina.

Nikki Haley will cut taxes, close the border, and defeat the Chinese communist threat. America's new chapter, strong and proud. I'm Nikki Haley, and I approve this message. Yeah, you know. Murphy, let me ask you as an ad maker. I could ask this of Axe, too, because he's also an ad maker. For both of you, I don't know. I mean, I know she's trying to make this...

Exactly. Exactly.

Well, the problem is, yeah, Trump in the Republican primary gestalt and, you know, the half of the primary that Trump has, which is a plurality that's going to quickly become 65 percent as other opponents drop out. The mentality is Trump has all the right enemies. So if you're against Trump, you're with them.

So it is very hard to move that number. She's trying to reconnect with them in South Carolina, where she was a popular governor. The problem is she's going to get the coastal vote, the old Mark Sanford congressional district, the pastel, tasteful clothing. Even though she's from Lexington County, that's where she grew up, Columbia, which is a little closer to the single helix wing of the Republican Party. The base. That world's lined up against her, and that's Trumpy. So I don't see her hook. If she had...

beat Trump, if she had knocked him on his ass, then she could show up in South Carolina with the, I was your governor, you know me, we did great things together, and I'm the winner and he's the loser. I'll give you a landslide against Biden, he'll give you a nail biter. That might have worked, and that was always my one-two. Now, they're going to define her, and they've got a month, as the Democrat-fueled Biden surrogate,

a squish and you know, and she's going to have the squish support the independence. It's going to be a repeat in a much hostile environment of what happened there. So there's no magic 1200 points of a 30 that says it. And I think you're right about she, she, she doesn't have the beat on Trump there. She was bouncing off a win. It would be a whole different ballpark. I mean, the problem is you're trying to beat a popular, popular guy.

I think that there are going to be a lot of people in South Carolina who at this juncture would say, yeah, we like Haley. She was a good governor. But we've got our guy who we think was a great president. And we want him back. And in that constellation, she loses. I have seen some private tracking in that state that has the race a lot closer than the public polls. And a lot of it has to do with she has very high favorabilities.

in South Carolina. The question is... But that's going to melt now. Can you go after Trump and

and have Trump going after you and maintain those. And I think that's something that she has to consider. So let's talk about Trump. And by the way, and then where do you go after, as you point out? By the way, if I were the Trump guys on the coastal side of the state, I'd be popping up with next time Nikki signs and stuff like that and take the energy of affection for her and say she's young. We'll see her later. Yeah, that's smart. You know, I said last night before Trump spoke,

that if it were, if I were him and I was his team, I'd write her out of the script. I'd just go out there and I'd say, yeah, I'd congratulate her and everybody else who ran and just start talking about the general election. But,

But I'm sure that was their plan. They had it written, I'm sure. This is what I've been saying for a while about Trump's crack operation. They're a crack operation when Trump's half asleep and 40 points ahead and happy. When he's hearing exit poll rumors in the middle of the day yesterday, it's a four point race. They needed a straight jacket and a falconing hood.

to get him back under control. And then he went out and did the most disgusting. Is that what's on his head, a falconing hood? That's my theory. They got a big one. Yeah, they got it on an S&M website, made some modifications. You know, those guys know about that stuff. It's not easy to wrap that hair around a falconing hood. No, no, it takes three guys in a crowbar, but they did it. But then he shook it loose and busted out. He said, somebody sober up, you know, Vivek, my insult comic,

And, you know, that was a Saturday Night Live skit. Oh, it was incredible. That's what it looked like. Let's play number four. She ran up when it was seven. And, you know, we have to do what's good for our party. And she was up and I said, wow, she's doing like a speech like she won. She didn't win. She lost. And, you know, last week we had a little bit of a problem. And if you remember, Ron was very upset because she ran up and she lost.

pretended she won Iowa. And I looked around, I said, didn't she come in third? Yeah, she came in third. And then I looked at the polls. She was talking about most win ability, who's going to win. And I had one put up. I don't know if you see it, but I have one put up. We've won almost every single poll in the last three months against Crooked Joe Biden, almost every poll. And she doesn't win those polls.

And she doesn't win this. This is not your typical victory speech, but let's not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night.

She had a very bad night. I love that Trump is deeply offended by the idea that somebody would lie about the outcome of an election. It proves that orange hair dye will destroy your sense of irony completely. Well, and then I want to play one other pipe because it got a lot raw. I find in life you can't let people get away with bullshit. Okay? You can't. You just can't do that. And when I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn't so fancy...

come up. I said, what's she doing? We won. And she did the same thing last week. But he was much more angry about it than I was. I said, get up there and you let him know. We are going to win this. We have no choice. If we don't win, I think our country is finished. I do. I believe our country is finished. And then and then there was this. And just a little note to Nikki. She's not going to win. But if she did.

She would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes. And I could tell you five reasons why already. Not big reasons. A little stuff that she doesn't want to talk about. But she will be under investigation within minutes. And so would Ron have been.

But he decided to get out. He decided to get out. I feel like we are sitting in the corner table of the Mafia restaurant. I feel like I'm hearing to an audio exhibit in a mental competency hearing. Well, the point is...

That he did the opposite of what he should do. And yeah, not only was the irony that he resented that she had stolen his party trick by trying to claim she won an election that she didn't win, but he was deeply offended by bullshit. And they said, you can't tolerate bullshit. Yeah, one thing he hates. This is a guy who's gone pretty far on that. And then he made up polls. You know, all the polls show her losing to Biden. That is an absolute bald-faced lie.

Yeah. But I mean, the thing is, you know, you know, you know, Haley perhaps better than I do. I've spent some time with her. My sense is bullying her is probably not the best strategy because she does. You know, she's tough and I think she probably didn't appreciate his threats. And I don't know if that's going to make it harder for her.

to make a decision to go. To your point, it always does make it harder, right? If this becomes sort of like a macho contest, it's definitely harder to get politicians that need to drop out to understand that they should drop out, right? I mean, the notion, as you said, he did the exact opposite of what he should have done. He should have been magnanimous and he should have forgotten about it and reminded

you know, not to bring bad things up, but 16 years ago, you know, two days before to the New Hampshire primary, we were up 10 points. And then a confluence of a couple of events, a bad comment in a debate, and Axe, you remember quite well, we're knocking on the door of the future president to tell him that he's inexplicably lost New Hampshire. That Gibbs blew the race. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

That was my view. We ran into two unstoppable forces of chaos. You guys, you never had a prayer. But the point is that we'd written a victory speech.

And in the cafeteria of the school where we gave the concession speech, we did one thing to it. We added a line in the first paragraph congratulating Hillary Clinton and gave the same speech. Right. And it ignored everything about the dynamics of what had just happened in New Hampshire and just set forward what the primary was going to be about. And you guys knew what you had in your back pocket, the Southern states.

But that's my point about the staff. They're great at managing Trump when Trump isn't doing anything. When Trump comes alive, they got the same Trump wrangling problem as everybody. I'm sure they know that. Yeah, and then all the, you know, the bar scene from Star Wars is waiting at the back door. And they show up and you're off to the races. But to your question about Nikki, I think half of her, she's a fighter. We'll want to dig in. And look, you...

When she was at the U.N. privately, she was quite appalled by Trump, you know, because she's smart and she gets it. But she never had the political courage to do anything about it because she couldn't figure out how to do that and move the big Nikki plan forward. So I think she's going to if she's smart, I mean, she can get in the news cycle for a couple cycles, pushing back your child and all that and entertain the world.

but she really ought to think long-term versus short-term because she has a long-term ticket. If Trump becomes the disaster, he will become either losing to Biden again or disastrous midterms, disastrous presidency. She's the only major player in the party who looks like a winner who in four years will be, she warned us. So she, she should think that through if she wants to be president of the United States. On the other hand,

The fun would be to go poke them in the eye and maybe only lose by 12 points in South Carolina. She'll probably wait a week and poll because she's probably too smart to believe the polling now, which is pre-disaster. And that, I think, will get her looking at a soft landing in about seven to nine days, if I had to guess. Murphy, a reminder, a reminder that.

She celebrated only her 52nd birthday during this primary. That's 12 in Republican candidate years. Yeah, I was going to say. I mean, if she pushes this thing to 80, she's got seven more elections. Right, right. But Gala's got the great joke. The Republicans always nominate the oldest white guy in a room who ran last time. She might break the ceiling on oldest white guy, but the double...

try has worked in the party. It worked for Romney, it worked for George H.W. Bush, it worked with three tries for Dole. That's what DeSantis decided. I think the calculation that both these, DeSantis and Haley, have been making for the full year is...

Maybe I can't make it now, but I'm going to take a shot and I still have a long career ahead of me. Right. But how do I preserve that option by not offending the Trump people so much that I'm read out of the script? Yeah, that's the fork in the road because DeSantis is going to jump on the Trump bandwagon, dye his hair orange. His big problem is keeping Casey from going on a murder spree.

you know, row and all the staff, be a pile of bones in their backyard. I think that is underway, but, but he's doing the suck up to Trump, which is the short term move, but longterm at the Trump franchise post disaster, the Republic, the party wants a reset is a lousy move.

So Nikki's the one who has ability to take a little different path. She ought to endorse him for the party nominee and then go away for a year. We'll see. We'll see. Or we can have the dramatic, and I'll be rooting for last stand in South Carolina, but, you know, charge the light brigade didn't turn out so well for the light brigade. For all that Trump fumbled last night in the speech,

He did win his second contest in a row. Nobody in the Republican side has won Iowa and New Hampshire together. No non-incumbent, yeah. Right. And even if you dive into the exit polling, and there's a lot of different numbers on this, but I was struck by the fact that 65% of this New Hampshire electorate was non-MAGA.

But if you ask those non-MAGA electorate, you know, more than half, 60% of them are going to be okay with Trump as a nominee. So the challenge Republican Party has is they've got a virtually unstoppable race to the nomination and these blaring warning signs around independence

voters for what Donald Trump brings to a general election. And so, you know, it is, you know, you're about to be in a car accident and you can't stop it is sort of, I feel like we're Republican. That's sort of what Haley's been trying to say in the final stanzas of this campaign, but they always get better after they're dead. You know, it's just like, okay, let's take a break right here for a word from our sponsor. We'll be right back.

There are other numbers in here that are cautionary and go to your point. I mean, you know, a two-thirds, I'm sorry, a third of the voters here, more than a third. Wait, let me find this sheet here that I was looking at before. Yeah, Trump fit for the presidency if he's convicted. The Republicans in the primary said 73 percent yes, but 25 percent said no.

And on the question of do you think Biden legitimately won in 2020 among Republicans, 32 percent said yes. That's a universe. Those two numbers say to me there is a universe of people who are Republicans or Republican leaning independents who some numbers.

number of whom just may not vote for Donald Trump. That's why I've been predicting somebody could take him out in New Hampshire. She just became more of a vessel for the Indies than somebody who moved that Republican number that she got from 20-something, you know, depending on what exit waiting you believe, up to 40, and then she would have beat him.

But he's the nominee. There's only one question left in American politics, and we're going to be talking about it a lot. How the hell do we fix Joe Biden and stop this madman from getting to the Oval Office? That's it. Just one other point on New Hampshire. I mean, you know, New Hampshire in its best days is a swing general election state. Yeah, even tilts anti now, anti-R. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, it's interesting that despite, and I think he said the opposite of this on the stage last night, I know everyone's shocked.

you know, he lost this state in 2016 to Hillary Clinton. He lost this state in 2020 to Joe Biden. You know, again, if you're Nikki Haley, I'd be making that case, right? To your point, Murphy, if you're going to exit stage right

at some point and preserve it, you know, go out with a bang that says he just, he can't win because that's what's likely to be proved as true. Just as a complete aside, you know who probably was quietly rooting for a change in the trajectory of this Republican race is Kelly Ayotte, who's running for governor there and probably isn't looking forward to Trump being on the

on the top of the ticket. But yeah, these are big. Trump is a colossus astride the Republican landscape. Now he has to step outside and the world's a lot less forgiving outside of that. I think, you know, one of the downsides of the race ending so early is right now he's the Harlem Globetrotters beating the Washington generals every week.

you know, and, you know, he just beats up on people and looks big and strong and that's gone now. And he's, he's, he's out in the, he's out in the real world. Not that he doesn't, you know, this is going to be a very,

competitive race because of Biden's own vulnerabilities, but he may look back at these days with great warmth and nostalgia. Yeah, I agree. It's been the easiest thing, and now the general election is going to begin. We'll spend a week or two wiggling around South Carolina. Reporters want to get some barbecue, but...

it really begins. Shrimp and grits. And look, South Carolina is a great and colorful place, particularly in Republican politics. I mean, I worked there with Fritz Hollings. I'll tell my very quick favorite story because you'll see this person pop up throughout the next two weeks. I know where you're going. Henry McMaster. Oh, yeah. Oh,

Henry McMaster is now the governor and now at two Henry. Yes. He's now the, uh, now the governor and was, has been the party chair before I worked for him. A great old politician named Fritz Hollings, uh, was in a debate running for reelection against one Henry McMaster and one of Henry McMaster's big things. This was during the house banking scandal and all this stuff. And, and the big thing running around Republican politics is politicians ought to take drug tests.

And Henry McMaster, in a debate, said to Fritz Hollings that he should take a drug test and release the results.

And Fritz Hollings said to Henry, I'll take a drug test and release the results if you take an IQ test and release the results. Let's just say this. Henry didn't take an IQ test. Well, you remember the old Hollings line to Sam Donaldson who was giving Fritz how about wearing a suit he bought in Hong Kong. And Hollings turned and said, well, Sam, you're going to get personal. Where'd you get that rug?

Yes. Where did you get that? Who made that rug on top of your head? I was told quickly when I got hired, never tell Fritz Hollings a joke. You don't want him to tell on national television.

So the irony of the McMaster thing and the Nikki Haley situation is she, he is the sole reason that she was in the Trump administration. Henry McMaster was her sponsor to get to, because Henry was the Lieutenant governor and he wanted to be governor. And Trump says, what do you want? And he says, I want you to find a job for Nikki Haley. And, you know, Haley had been virulently anti-Trump. She wouldn't speak at the convention and,

And she got to be U.N. ambassador because of Henry McMaster. Well, I'll tell you, I know that political culture in the Republican world down there. And it's a lot of knife to the juggler and nothing personal business. And Haley has performed that way, which is why there are very few.

South Carolina inside players who are for her on this campaign. Her staff is mostly non-South Carolinian. You see poor Tim Scott standing behind Trump. Yeah, Scott was so... Oh, God, the Stefanik Prize. Yeah, horrible. Sitting there mugging for the camera. She appointed him, of course, to the Senate seat he holds now. And it just...

Yeah, there's nobody who Trump has played him like a pelt last night and humiliated him by saying, you know, she appointed you and now you're for me. You must really hate her. And Tim Scott is not a hateful guy. I had to run up to the microphone and say, no, no, I just love you. Yeah, no, it was disgusting.

You know, I think it broke the heart of a lot of people who had a high opinion of Tim Scott before this. And of course, Trump is there's a whole dimension to it that in the modern era, I can't speculate on. But it was it was very, very bad.

So let's talk about Biden. You know, he he he set up a system to eliminate Iowa and New Hampshire, which were unfriendly to him in 2020, finished fourth and fifth in those states, decided to start the race in South Carolina, which failed.

basically launched him toward the presidency in 2020 with a large black population. And so the party rules that he orchestrated made it penalized candidates for participating in the New Hampshire primary. So he couldn't participate in the New Hampshire primary. Along comes Dean Phillips, the congressman from Minnesota who saw himself as a modern day Eugene McCarthy candidate.

who challenged Lyndon Johnson and forced him out of the race by doing well in New Hampshire. And at the urging of some venal, scheming political consultants, was persuaded that he could get in. Like who, David? Yeah.

I'm not mentioning any names. I will. Steve Schmidt, after hustling the coffee ego maniac, tried the same grift here, and now I'm happy to see he's back behind the counter at Quiznos where he belongs. This thing was a money-grubbing caper extraordinaire, and they couldn't even break 25% against nobody. That was Mike Murphy's victory night speech right there. Yeah, there you go. And another thing, I've got Vikram Ramaswamy here to say a few words. Yeah, I mean, Phillips spent over $5 million and got 19...

percent of the vote against a candidate who couldn't campaign and didn't. But I think it is ironic that they ran a really Jim Demers and the folks up there, Gibbs, who you know, rallied and did a write-in campaign. And then someone put a

a million and a half into a super pack up there. They sent out 14 mail pieces telling people how to vote, uh, right. And, but they crushed him by better than, uh, better than three to one. I, I, I think 73% is what they ended up with. So the, the great irony of that thing is that, uh, the writing campaign that he couldn't participate in seem more organized than the campaign that he's actually running.

Well, they had the great advantage that Biden never campaigned in New Hampshire. You guys are tough. I'm just going to say, right, well, one of the statistics, just to get us back on the... At least playing on both sides of this. You know that...

that Biden got more as a non-candidate in this race than we got in 2012 in New Hampshire with Obama's re-election. Now, granted, the state's obviously gotten bigger, so some of that may not be a huge surprise. But I think the real interesting test on a primary scale comes in 10 days, because as you mentioned, that South Carolina primary is now

It's now not part of the Republican side. Right. It's freestanding. It's February 3rd. I think a lot of people are going to be watching particularly black vote and particularly older black vote to see what type of dynamic Biden gets and what that means for a general election. Just as Trump has struggled with independent voters, we've seen black vote softening, younger vote softening. But Biden, and I think it'll be interesting to see

in Richland County, which is Columbia, in and around Jim Clyburn's district in South Carolina State, what happens over in Black

Black sections of the PD and down into Charleston. What does all that mean for the health of Joe Biden's Democratic candidates? Yeah, that's a good point. The other element of this that pertains to the previous discussion we had is if, you know, you can as independents participate in either party primary, you can't participate in both. Democratic primary comes first. To the extent that Biden gets elected

independent voters to come and participate in the Democratic primary. Those people can't participate in the Republican primary. One more small... Democrats either. Democrats can't either. Right. So if they were trying to rig this... Right, right, right. Run one more barrier for Haley if she's in this uphill fight. But it's over. I mean, if we step back, what counts now is the general election, and the press is going to start that in a week.

So how does Biden square up with Trump? Biden put out a statement last night. He made a couple of moves that were long overdue. Yes. General Malley Dillon, who's been his deputy White House chief of staff, who managed the campaign in 2020 and did a great job, who we know from the

from the Obama campaigns, a really, really proficient campaign technician. She'd been basically doing two jobs, which is overseeing the campaign from the White House and deputy chief of staff for operations, which is Gibbs knows is a really, really consuming job. And this so they sensibly finally said to her,

We need you over at the campaign. And she's going. And Mike Donilon, who we all know, who is the sort of message guru, the campaign strategist, message strategist, is now moving full time to the campaign. These are long overdue moves. And it is helpful that those folks are now fully engaged in the campaign and 100 percent White House duties. So I thought that was a positive state. But will anything change?

because they're white house generals becoming campaign generals you know so incremental improvement is likely in the mechanics of things yes but strategically when anything changed because something's got to i agree with that as well but you know we i know we were on the secret text channel uh arguing about this just yesterday i i agree with you i don't know this doesn't this doesn't fix his approval rating it doesn't fix how people are viewing the economy but

Look, White House deputy chief of staff for operations is a job and a half on any day. Right. Right. And so and Donald is obviously the voice of Joe Biden. I think the idea now that Wilmington doesn't have to call Washington to make any level of decision is going to make the operation of that campaign a lot.

better. And look, this is a campaign that's going to be different than 2020, right? You're going to have events. You're going to have active campaigning. This isn't going to be COVID-dominated, God willing. And so I think having an apparatus that's distinct—Ax, you've argued this. Apparently, our old boss argued this, if you read the front page of The Washington Post—

And we set this up in 2012. You have to have an apparatus that is distinct, even if there are people in the White House. And Plouffe certainly let his opinion be known on things that were important in the campaign. But you can't sit in Washington and make all the decisions in Chicago or all the decisions in Wilmington. It's just there's not enough time in the day. There's also collaboration that goes on when you're under one roof.

Yes. That just doesn't happen if you're not. Let's stop for a minute and listen to a word from one of our fine sponsors. The fundamental issues are message issues, and they need to resolve those. You know, they went out on democracy. Yesterday they did an event on abortion rights, which, by the way, was disrupted by protesters, war protesters, which I think they're going to face on every campus until tomorrow.

The situation in the Middle East is resolved, and that's a whole separate set of issues. But they can't view the campaign as a series of tactical issues. Exactly.

And they need not to ignore the fact that people have concerns about Biden's age. And I think they have to engage that directly and acknowledge it, but also make clear that this, you know, each of these guys are old and each have liabilities. And the question is, you

who offers the greatest assets to people who are concerned about the future, concerned about their kids. And, you know, I'm still waiting for that. I worry a bit that they're a bit too tactical and not strategic in their messaging. And the message is not consistent. And it's not being delivered by the battery of surrogates that Murphy keeps calling for, led by Gina Raimondo.

The great one. Do you want me to make a joke, too, just to get you? No, I'm saving that for the big the big finish. But I think they've got a lot of work to do. I hope they don't think that democracy and abortion rights are sort of magic bullets that solve all their problems. They're not. I don't think they figured out the ballot question.

What's the election about? What happens with me? What happens with him? Motives. That's the big narrative. Yeah. I'm waiting for that. And also, I think Biden can get a little feistier. There's always a tendency in presidential campaigns to do Mount Olympus, but they're running against a crooked condominium salesman from Queens.

and who communicates in total insult vernacular. And Biden doesn't want to be that guy. But I don't mind a Biden quip of, look, it's true, I'm old, but he's crazy and old.

Boom. Just a few of those. Let Biden get into the scrap a little, because if he comes out on top of one, he's suddenly 10 years younger in perception. I think two things that bear some repeating as to what's happened in the last week. The one point to yours, Murphy, is Donald Trump's had some real senior moments on the campaign trail in the last week. Totally. He makes Biden look like Einstein. I mean, all of a sudden, Nikki Haley is Nancy Pelosi-like.

There's just, I mean, you've seen even the, I mean, even the Biden campaign's tweeting out some of his quotes saying, we don't know what he means either. So I think,

I think there's, and I will say this, I think that the media finally caught on to this in a way that they haven't really caught on to before. I agree. It's turning, which is good. They ought to throw gas on that from the Biden side. The second thing, and look, we don't know where this lands, but consumer confidence has increased in the last two months in a way that it hasn't done since the end of the Persian Gulf War. For you listeners, Google that out there. That's 1991. Yeah.

not in 2004, 2005. So almost maybe more than three decades since that number happened. Does that end up over the course of time? It's not going to be instantaneous. Right. Does that save September and October? Yes, exactly. And there's a shot if it keeps going. That's the best news. These stats are always, voter sentiment lags these stats. That's been the history of these things. The question is whether people give Biden

You know, the dilemma they've got right now is because of these questions about his age, his stamina, his acuity, people tend to not give him credit for good things that happen and give him all the credit for the bad things that happen.

and how you get people associated with... It may just be that the change in mood will help him. I saw Chris Coons, the senator from Delaware, a great guy on TV on Sunday, and he was working from the same old script, which is the statistics are... These are incredible. And it's like...

Like, how many times do they need to learn? You cannot jawbone people into feeling what they don't feel. You know, you have to, you can guide them there. But if you try and do not turn every day into report card day. Yeah, grab their lapels. Listen, idiot, don't you know that foreign exports are up 2% just in for... No, no, what they know is the economy is creeping back.

If it continues, they could have a much better September, October. So be Kreskin. Tell the future a little. We're doing the hard work. We're seeing the results are coming, but here's the real deal. Who's for who? I'm for the middle class. Trump's for himself. Here's what you get at the end. And then get the world's greatest victory lap ready for when it counts after Labor Day, when people believe it's true, rather than telling them now that you're wrong. It's just bad marketing, and I

The stakes are so high, they got to get this right. My worry, Murphy, is they're waiting six weeks until the State of the Union. Yeah, I wouldn't have that mentality if I were them. They're behind.

I just think if there's some plausible explanation for it, and I don't think it's necessarily a good one, but I think you'll have the largest political audience of the year minus the debates listening to that speech. It's a huge day. It's a big, big moment in a world that these moments have become less big because...

of our polarization and just the overall media environment. The reason this is so important isn't just because it's a chance for him to, on a big stage, to deliver the message in a coherent way.

It's also that this is not just a State of the Union speech, it's a State of the President speech. A year ago, he really performed well in that speech. If he can repeat what he did a year ago and people see him engaged, lively, in the moment, in addition to delivering a message that speaks to them, it could be a really important thing for him in sort of beginning to change the narrative of

And I know that they've been working hard on this for months and months. Yes, but on the other way, the leverage could go the other way, too. I mean, I think the thing on the wall would be, great, we have the 92-page plan and all that, and the president's going to want to claim credit for the best Thanksgiving in 11 years, except for the other three. But half the speech coverage is going to be, how old does he look?

And so they need the right self-deprecating thing. They ought to go to the Reagan playbook a little on that. And this ought to be a very friendly thing because it's the performance is in some ways going to be even more important than the normally hugely important content. Yeah, I agree. And they ought to build a speech to maybe his reduced...

ability rather than say, all right, here's some coffee. You can do it. You know, this needs some real thinking and a special fitting for him now who he is. Well, you know, Axe, and we'll get more into this as we get close to the state of the union, to fight the bureaucracy in that building and around Washington,

They should want to make this a, to your point, a thematic speech and a narrative speech and not a, not a, and not an 80, not a list. Yeah. A 96 or 86 minute speech. We're like, we're going to do this at the department of interior. We're going to do this at the department of commerce. We're going to lead free paint under my prettier ships initiative. Murphy, you got to appreciate it. When you work in the white house and you're involved in the speech process,

I mean, you want to get a burner phone because... Yeah, they're all calling you to get their program in. You're being blown up by everybody in the whole bureaucracy trying to get one sentence in the speech. They live to get that one line. And I mean, the fights over this are just legion, you know? It's just, like, incredible. So they've got to resist that. And Biden's own impulse...

to want to want to, you know, extol his own. No, it's to grab the lapel saying, listen, idiots, here's what I did for you. You owe me a vote. And it's all wrong. One other thing I think bears a lot of watching clearly as we get into this general election and is is what states do third party candidates qualify for the ballot? Who are those candidates? I think, you know, you know,

Just this morning, I think the Robert Kennedy Jr. campaign announced that their Super PAC raised almost $6 million last night at his 70th birthday celebration, which makes him a little younger. But also that they had gathered, according to them, enough signatures, only 3,000 needed, but required to get his name on the ballot in New Hampshire. So there's a big dynamic that's going to happen tomorrow.

I think what's really going to be telling is not all the people that want to run as third-party candidates, but all the people that both want to run and have the apparatus to gather the signatures and actually qualify for those ballots. Right. And I think, you know, Kennedy's campaign has signaled that they're concentrating on the battleground states.

So, you know, that is going to be a big factor in this campaign. We've said it before. Trump has a high floor and a low ceiling. And if you lower the threshold enough, it...

Changes the dynamic. Yeah. Makes it easier for him. And so obvious that it hardly needs saying, but so that we do that a lot here. It's our bread and butter. You know, remember an umbrella in the rain. Write that down, folks. It's a hell of a lot easier to be a challenger when people are unhappy than it is to be an incumbent. And Biden had the wind at his back in 2020, and now he's got the wind in his face.

Though this is a weird one because you have two incumbents people want to fire running against each other. But you know what? The last incumbent, it is incredible the degree to which people have selective memory. Oh, no, no. Look, you could see it in all the data. Trump's better in the economy. I'm for Trump.

And Biden's got to move that damn number by Election Day. There was a lot of discussion last night about how Trump is now the establishment candidate. That is absolutely wrong. Trump has conquered the establishment. He's healed the establishment on his terms. But he is still viewed as an insurgent.

And he is viewed as an anti-establishment insurgent at a time when people are really restive and unhappy with the status quo. So that, you know, that makes him that makes him dangerous in this race. You know, we'll see what happens. It could be this whole thing turns on.

what happens in a courtroom and whether there's actually a trial in 2000. And I mean, it's clear from these numbers and these first two contests that they're going to be some really concerned voters. I don't think, but in the numbers that are mentioned here, but a lot of voters are going to be concerned if he is convicted, he will spin it as he spun everything else. We're going from a world where the trial has helped them in a partisan Republican world. Yes. To the world where it's going to the general election and the real story of New Hampshire is,

was the general election thrusting its way into the Republican primary to poke at Trump a little. That's where that Nikki vote came from. All right, hold that thought. We're going to take a short break. And now a word from our sponsors.

So, hey, I have a quick announcement for you patriots out there. As you boys know, Gibbs and Axelrod, I'm a good Detroit-born car nut. My lifetime average is six miles per gallon. Burned a lot of dinosaur juice, but I've become a nut for electric cars. I like not paying the house of sod. They're quiet. They're really fast.

Mechanically, they're brilliantly designed. Fewer moving parts, less maintenance. Nothing not to like. They are the future. And if we don't get our act together, the Chinese are going to make all of them. And that's not good for America. So...

I am tired. I'm sick and tired. And the great Bill Needle tradition for you, SCTV fans. Tell it. Exactly. To preach it here. Of all the Republican bashing of EVs. Unfortunately, electric vehicles have become tribalized. They're too important. So, along with the pollster who brought the Rolling Stones to Alabama, Robert, the great Dr. David Hill, another Auburn man, we've done some polling and we've set up

The EV Politics Project to look at why there's a tribal division over EVs, what the drivers are, and how we can overcome it. So just go check all this out. It's a lot of fun.

A lot of stuff there. A quiz you can take to get through all the disinformation. We have a merch store with some modeling photos we're going to get from Axelrod and Gibbs here once the two XLs come in. We got all kinds of stuff going. So check it out at evpolitics.org, evpolitics.org, or on Twitter or X or whatever the hell Elon calls it now, which is at evpoliticsusa. I'm going to be doing a lot in this space, and we're going to be going into the swing states

where there has been billions of investments and tens and tens of thousands of new American manufacturing jobs thanks to all the investment in EVs. Robert's nodding a lot because he's a commie Tesla driver. I'm a CCS non-Tesla driver. But wherever you're EV, we even have hats, EV Republicans, which is our second bestseller because there are a lot of us out there. Time to stand up and push back for the future.

Bless you. Bless you, Father Murphy. Now, you're still driving the Aztec, right? Listen, I'm going to get in on this deal. The great news for our listeners is that Mike Murphy has promised an electric vehicle for all of our listeners. So if you want one, contact him at murphymikeatgmail.com. Come on down to Murphy Motors where everybody gets a major discount deal. I'll tell you what, in the name of Axelrod, if you go to the merch store and want to get your EV Republican t-shirt or hat or our bestseller,

I own an EV. I like it. And I vote. Just type in a checkout Axelrod and you will get a 10% discount. There you go. See? Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Thank you, guys. It's going to be a fun project. And we're going to maybe do a spinoff podcast. And you can come on in and talk about your own EV experiences. Now, Axel, I remember you used to have a Pontiac Aztec, just like Walter White. You're the only guy I know who had one. So we're going to move you to an EV. We got Robert.

And you're next. We have our sights on you. I've been in hybrids for years, so I'm moving over there. That's good. Step in the right direction. Just to be clear, Murphy, before I drove a Tesla in 2011, I bought a Chevy Volt. That's with a V.

Yeah, you're old school. Chevy Bolt. I remember. It's a good car. I love that car. There isn't a better place to promote this project than here because we've been operating on hot air for years here. We are an environmentally sound podcast. Anyway, fellows, good to be with you. We'll see you next week. On to South Carolina. Yeah, onward. Onward. All right. Thank you all. See you guys.